The mist had thickened.
Thicker than the day before. Thicker than any moment since Elías had awakened in this world that breathed like a damp corpse.
The rotting clouds coiled around everything, and the light from above — if it was still light — held the color of dead teeth.
The sky did not change. It didn't brighten, didn't darken.
It simply remained, a ceiling of cold flesh.
Elías kept walking.
Not because he had a destination, but because stopping here was the only thing worse than moving forward.
The earth beneath his bare feet felt warm, as if a colossal body lay buried beneath the surface, still pulsing.
Sometimes, he could feel something shift under him. Not quickly. Not violently.
Just alive. Persistent. Like an ancient hunger.
And then, at last, sound.
Not natural.
Not wind, nor leaves, nor water.
A scratching, thin and internal sound — as if the world were chewing bones beneath its skin.
It came from the ground, first. Then the walls.
And finally, from inside Elías's own head.
He stopped, breathing shallow.
The sound was calling him. Not with words — but with form.
As if direction had been etched into his nerves. Like a memory that had never belonged to him.
He obeyed.
---
The stones beneath his feet formed an impossible path.
Not natural, but ancient. Too aligned. Too black. Too cold.
When he touched one, his heart skipped a beat — as if the stones had been waiting for him.
As he advanced, symbols began to appear on the surfaces around him.
Marks of closed eyes.
Spirals devoured from within.
Symbols not written, but scarred into the stone — like skin that had suffered too long.
Each step felt like descent, even when the land seemed flat.
Until at last, in the distance, a half-swallowed structure emerged from the soil.
It looked like a temple — or a tunnel. Or both.
Its pillars were broken, like torn legs, and the entrance was a twisted mouth — hungry, dark.
Inside, the darkness breathed.
---
Within the temple, silence felt alive.
But not calm.
It was a pressed silence, as if every sound in the world had been strangled, dismembered, and left here beneath stone.
Elías lit his lighter.
The flame trembled — not from wind, but from ancestral fear.
The walls were covered in inscriptions.
Not written with ink.
But with something dried and clinging.
Dark red. Porous.
Written flesh. Crushed bone.
Spiraled symbols. Inverted circles. Teeth turning inward.
Among them, again and again, a broken word appeared — hidden, fragmented:
NOCTV —
VORR —
CTVOR —
NO———
Elías didn't know what it meant, but his blood understood.
It began to pump differently.
Faster. Thicker.
The path led to broken stairways. He descended.
Step by step, the light from the lighter fought — and lost.
Below, there was a circular hall.
At its center, a ritual circle, burning with black flame.
Flames that did not illuminate.
They only devoured.
Even sound.
Then, he heard it.
---
> — Elías...
The voice didn't come from outside.
Nor from within.
It was behind everything — as if the fabric of reality had been torn.
He froze.
> — The darkness remembers you.
The language was foreign, but his soul understood.
He dropped to his knees.
Not from fear. Not from reverence.
But because the ground demanded it.
The black fire pulsed.
At its core, flesh throbbed.
A name was etched into it.
Not with letters — with pain.
Noctvorr.
Upon seeing it, Elías felt his entire body lurch backward.
As if the name was a punch.
Or an unacceptable truth.
He cried black tears.
Or were they shadows?
Or memories?
His head throbbed.
But his heart... began to sing.
And the song was horrifying.
A song of dead things, buried too early, now wanting out.
He saw — for a moment — something inside the flame.
Something with a thousand closed eyes.
A thousand mouths that never learned to speak — only to swallow.
And then, silence.
And complete darkness.
---
When he awoke, he was outside the temple.
Covered in gray dust, with black marks on his hands.
His skin was cracked, as if it had absorbed something.
He coughed. Something black left his mouth.
It looked like smoke.
Or thought.
The sky...
Now had a crack in it.
As if something had struck hard — from inside the world.
And in the distance —
Light.
Not natural.
Fire.
Marching.
Like torches.
And human figures around them.
A city.
Finally, a living place.
Or... something worse than alive.